A little hiatus

Our little blog here is taking a bit of a break so that I can put my feet up and get some much needed R&R. Our little shop at Blend Creations will still run as usual however :)

It's just that a little blogging break is needed to encourage me to actually stay away from the computer and not try and work for 'just five minutes', which inevitably seems to stretch to 'just five hours' if I get a little too absorbed and that sort of defeats the purpose of trying to get some R&R.

So in the meantime, Eric might throw in the odd blog posting and share some of his finds. Until then, have fun interweb! and see you in a little while ;)

Ambidextrous chopsticks?

This past weekend, Eric and I went to one of our favourite local Hong Kong style cafes where they serve 'westernized' dishes (e.g. Curry beef on rice, with shoestring fries, and baked seafood on rice with cheese <-- Cheese! This is Chinese food, that's why it's odd but sooo good). While we were there, the resident grandma-figure gave Eric a bit of a hard time not because he was a non-Chinese person using chopsticks, but because he was a lefty using chopsticks. She even attempted to make him switch the chopsticks to his other hand. (To Eric's credit, he was quite nice to the woman despite her interference and he uses his chopsticks expertly!)

Now, I don't know how many of you are ambidextrous enough to switch any utensil over to your non-dominant hand, let alone chopsticks. It's a very odd sensation of having absolutely no control, that's for sure. But to help out that cause of developing ambidexterity, Perpetual Kid has a few novelty chopsticks that might help in such a situation (what that would be, I'm not sure).

First off there's the Clothespin chopsticks ($3.89US for a pair)


Or there's the Party People chopsticks ($11.99 for 6 pairs)


Finally, for the younger set, who might just like playing around instead of developing their chopstick ambidexterity, there's the Chopstick Kids ($10.99 for a pair)



If nothing else, these products are an interesting study in the re-design of a centuries old invention. ;) Make sure to check out the rest of the Perpetual Kid site for some other fun yet mostly-useful products (the Play-Doh cologne doesn't quite hit that category though).

Change of scenery

Every once in a while I get bored with the look of my desktop. Whenever this happens, I end up going over to Pixel Girl Presents and seeing what sort of sexy new wallpapers she's got up. Yup, this is the same Pixel Girl (aka Shanalyn Victor) who runs the Pixel Girl Shop -- where along with many cool things are some Blend Creations products. :)

Pixel Girl Presents is a great place to find things like icon sets:



and Illustrator tutorials while you're at it.

But mostly I just go for the pretty pictures done by some pretty talented illustrators:

"Organic" by Tomek Ferenc


"What makes you happy" by Megan Hopkins


"Kumori" by David Hoe


There are well over 1000 different desktops to choose from, so good luck finding the perfect one for your compy. :)

Fellow indie designer: Pink loves Brown

Pink loves Brown is the crafty/product side of designer Nicole Balch. Nicole is also the graphic designer for all those great Indie Finds ads (for which Blend Creations is part of)! Just in time for 'back to school', Nicole's got these artist's sets of 12 coloured pencils in a pretty cloth carrier for $32 US.




My other favourite Pink loves Brown products are these little pink paper suitcases, which apparently are perfect for kittens. Or stationery. Take your pick ;) The suitcases go for $20 for a set of two, or you can get a gift set with stationery for $32.




I checked though, and it turns out you can't get a paper suitcase with a kitten. :) Probably better that way because the shipping could be a problem!

Clever marketing ploys

Since becoming homeowners, we've been frequenting stores that we never needed to go to before. Case in point, in the last four weeks, we've been to Home Depot waay too many times. It's not that our house even needs any major repair work or renovations, but it's just all the little things that creep up on you, and so the easiest thing to do is just to go to the biggest hardware / reno / everything store around.

One thing I did discover that delights the very frugal (okay, cheap) person in me is the Home Depot Hammer Drop. Yeah baby. It's only on the Canadian Home Depot site and not the American one, but it's certainly a clever marketing ploy to make me keep going back to their website (not unlike a blog perhaps ;)? )



The Hammer Drop is a different featured item that they change every morning at 8am, and it's usually at a low low bargain price of at least 1/2 off. Neither Eric nor I have been too tempted yet and bought a Hammer Drop item, but I have a feeling it's coming soon. One day it was marine lights, today it's a 23-function-multi-tool-with-ratchet! Soo tempting.

Maybe we'll have to adopt the Hammer Drop marketing and offer a special Blend Creations 'hammer drop' (cleverer marketing name needed...) time / web address where you can get a bargain? Oooh, that little mental hamster is churning today. :)

Trained goldfish

Fun on the interweb found via BoingBoing. At first, it doesn't seem like much of a feat. Big deal. Gold fish swimming together -- but keep watching. They're synchronized!

It reminds me of that episode of Mythbusters where Adam and Jamie test the myth of whether or not goldfish have a five second memory by seeing if they're trainable. Jamie, Mythbuster extraordinaire, busts the myth by showing that indeed they can be trained.

If goldfish can be trained, maybe there's hope for 'higher' creatures!

What's that bug?

This is actually a photograph that Eric took, pre-digital cameras, quite a few years ago. He knew it was a red milkweed beetle at the time and it's actually quite a cute beetle portrait (compared to what these critters look like when you see them with their mandibles exposed).

Over the weekend, I had a chance to sit around and do nothing for a little while. "Doing nothing" in this case meant putting my feet up and reading three days worth of newspapers and the most recent issue of Real Simple magazine.

While perusing the magazine, I found this great link to What's that Bug? The site is run by two photographers, Lisa Anne and Daniel, and it originally started out as an art project of sorts. Over time, people have emailed in photographs of bugs that they'd like identified and the two consult entomologists to help figure out just what it is that just scurried away or that you might have squished.

Based on this site, I've seen some rather large house centipedes that were previously just called "Dear god what is that thing?!" in my mind:

It's good to know that these things are harmless at least, even if they don't look it. In any case, the site isn't for those who really don't like bugs. I don't like them, but my curiousity does get the better of me :) And at least now I have a name to that crazy fast-scurrying thing with multiple legs...

Childhood dreams, two decades later

A couple of years ago, Eric and I did a week long bike trip as our summer vacation. We tuned up our bikes, packed up our panniers and headed out for the open road. About 500 km later when the trip was done, we learned that biking is a hard but fun way to travel and that if you're going to do it every day for a little over a week, you need a good seat.

Ever since that trip though, we haven't done any hard core biking. Perhaps my very long biketrip days are over. If that's the case, then I might just have to get this:



This is the bike of my wildest childhood dreams. (Keep in mind, I'm the only girl with two brothers, and my first bike was a hand-me-down from my older brother). Yes, it's a Hello Kitty Cruiser by Nirve. It even has Hello Kitty heads imprinted on the tires.

The first time I saw one, I think my inner child squealed with glee (or at least, I hope it was just my inner child, and not the mature, outer-persona). In Ottawa, you can actually buy these lovely Nirve cruisers at Joe Mamma in the Glebe.

Nirve makes some pretty sweet looking cruisers in their Classic, Island (love these too), Street/Strip and Chopper series. Then they've got a separate line of co-branded cruisers. Besides Hello Kitty, they also do John Deere and Paul Frank bikes.

I guess it's a good thing they didn't have these around when I was a kid because the Hello Kitty bike of my dreams, at $280 US is a lot more than the Canadian Tire bike I got handed down. I suppose that's the good thing about being a 'grown-up' -- you can buy your own toys.

Fellow indie designer: Fetopia

Fetopia is run by husband and wife team, Todd and Rachel out of Cincinnati, Ohio. It's one of those crazy little shops that takes a theme (fetos!) and runs wild with it ;) Basically, they sell polymer clay-sculpted fetuses that can be used as beads (or you can also get them without holes, as magnets or in the form of accessories).

I like some of the odd facts about their business:
1) More Fetos have been sold to individuals in Texas than in every other state combined. Roughly 1/3 of all orders filled are headed to Texas. and
2) The most requested fetus is the Spiney, or "Heather Graham" fetus.

Your basic Cletus Fetus starts at $0.50 for your basic fetus that measures about 1.5" w x 1.5" h.


Cletus the Fetus.

They've got an assortment of 'basic' fetuses, but then they go and get all fancy with their 'signature' collections: astrological signs, feti of the world, anipals, and my favorite, the celebrity-inspired Fetos.


Japanese feto with little tiny sushi!


Dylan the skunk.


Feto Gene Simmons (and the rest of KISS as well).

If you're looking for something unusual and definitely indie, Fetopia's worth a look. Certainly would make an unusual gift!

Downsizing - who needs a mansion anyway?

I'm not a big fan of water, but I love the work that goes into designing boat interiors because of how efficiently a space can be used. Along the same lines, I've always loved floorplans and seeing how spaces are used -- especially small ones. I don't mean the "under 2000 sq. ft." homes that some of these Home / Interior magazines think of when they say "small". I mean truly tiny.

The Tumbleweed Tiny House Company has mastered the utilization of small spaces, ranging in size from 40 sq. ft. up to a 'whopping' 500 sq. ft. All of the houses are designed by Jay Shafer, who actually lives in a 100 sq foot home that he designed himself. Below are a couple of examples of some of these tiny houses.

The Eepoo house is ~100 sq. ft (and it's portable).



The Greg is smaller at 60 sq. ft., but has an upper sleeping loft.




You can buy full drawing sets of the Tumbleweed houses ($850US) so you can build your own, or you can even buy ready-made models starting from ~$30k. In so many ways I'd love to be so minimalistic that we could live in such a small space. Realistically though, the tiny houses probably aren't meant for family living :)

Play with your furniture

We found Movisi's modular storage/shelving system, PLAY, via DesignSpotter. In many ways PLAY is like lego for grown-ups except that it allows you to make your own furniture.




There are 3 basic elements to the PLAY system and together they let you create a variety of configurations. Movisi sells PLAY kits starting at €30.00 for a one-cube kit.

Seems both fun and practical to me. Fun since you can reconfigure your shelf whenever you like and practical since the pieces are made with a lightweight closed-cell foam that's friendly to hardwood floors and walls and easy to clean.

Sweet sweet candy

Blend Creations' Washi pendants were featured in this lovely editorial write-up in Daily Candy, today! So a big 'hello' to everyone who's found our blog via DC :)

It's been a pretty good week so far, for only being Tuesday! Yesterday we were sitting at #1 for the most popular bookmark on Stylehive, (I believe we've currently been bumped to #2) and the StylehiveBlog did a nice post about us too.

Toot. Toot. That's me tooting our own horn. I'm done now ;)

Better than a Chia Pet

The Organic Pet Plant site out of Australia has what they've dubbed "Living Miniature Tomagochi" -- tiny trees and plants that are encased in a little terrarium that measure 1.5 cm (~0.5") wide and 2.8 cm (~1") in height.



Like any plant, you do have to care for it by watering the little capsule and exposing it to light. If all goes well, then your plant will thrive and grow, and it'll take between 3-6 months to outgrow its little capsule.

Right now, it looks like these little babies go for about $10 AU (or about $9 CAD/$8 US), but it seems they're only selling through ebay. So cute. A good way to pass on the gift of green. :)

Retro cool for the kitchen

I found the site, Vintage Stoves by Stevan Thomas after browsing through some Stylehive links. This company takes old stoves from the late 1940s-50s and fully restores them to beyond their original glory by not only making the appliance functional again, but also giving them a spiffy new paint job.

If we lived in a 1950s-era bungalow and drank martinis after work and had money to extravagantly spend on a stove, I'd be all over one of these. Currently available restored stoves run between $4200 US to almost $9000 US (not including shipping).

Check out their gallery of recently sold stoves here, and others in their new homes here. These are a few of my favourites:

Their limited edition Satsuma Orange 36" Wedgewood


A 1951 Western Holly Continental 37


A 1951 O'Keefe and Merritt 850-G:


These stoves just seem to have so much more of a presence than our 1990s era Kenmore. ;)

Stylehive

I've just noticed that the Blend Creations washi pendants been amongst the top 10 popular bookmarks at Stylehive over the last couple of days. And hey, that's pretty cool :)

Stylehive is a social bookmarking site that lets you bookmark all things fashion, style and product related. It's a good way to find some neat things you might not have otherwise found.

In case you didn't know, we're offering 15% off all our washi pendants this month. But -- in order to know that and the corresponding discount code, you'd have to be a newsletter subscriber.

So, in case you missed out, you can still take advantage of the offer by first joining the newsletter and then letting us know you did so. We'll forward you the latest issue and then you too will know what the discount code is. :)

Fellow indie designer: Soapylove

Debbie Chialtas' Soapylove soaps need to be filed under the category "don't eat this, no matter how badly you want to". Now normally I wouldn't post about a product like soap unless I could appreciate its other qualities like it's smell and latherability or something useful because it is soap afterall. I make an exception in this case because Debbie makes popsicle-shaped soaps that actually smell like popsicles. Yum.

Like this "Orange You Cute" Soapsicle that smells like a creamsicle. It even has the creamy white filling that you can see from the bite that's missing from it:


Or this candy-like creation, the "Peace, Love, and Soapiness" Soapsicle.


The Soapsicles retail for $6 US each and I can see them being a fun gift to give or receive. There are many other soaps in the gallery. You can buy the soaps from Debbie's Etsy store:
The Soapylove Shop.

Photorealistic illustrations

Both Eric and I read BoingBoing on a regular basis. It's a "directory of wonderful things" aka a mishmash of cool things on the interweb, design stuff, tech stuff, and generally a really good daily read.

Recently they featured this link to The World's Most Photorealistic Vector Art. It's truly amazing to me that someone has this much control over gradients in Illustrator.


This isn't a photo of Keira Knightley, but rather an illustration done by Paul Bush.

This one's an illustration by Halim Ghodbane:



Check out the gallery of other vector illustrations at the bottom of the post. Make sure to hit the "Outline" button to see the mesh used for the gradients. Wow.

Pick your own pendant

Today we're revisiting the work of glassmaker and designer Izik Levy. You may remember this previous post about Izik's work.

Izik's just launched his new online store: Rockettoro, where he's selling these pretty glass vials that are meant for plucking a little blossom and wearing it around your neck:



They're $36US each and a nice way to have 'fresh' jewelry every day :)
I'll certainly be keeping an eye out on Rockettoro to see when Izik puts up new stuff!

Architectural detail by faeries

Yesterday was a Civic holiday here in Ontario and/or some sort of holiday in most of Canada. So we're mostly recovering from a bit too much sun and a lot of good food and now I suppose it's on to the regular work week.

We'll start this week off with the faerie doors of Ann Arbor, Michigan -- I'd found this link not too long ago, but unfortunately, I can't remember exactly where. Apparently there's a few of these doors all over the city of Ann Arbor and because they're so wee, you might not necessarily notice them at first glance.

This one is at the "Red Shoes" store:


I love that the detailing of the tiny door and the fact that there's an inner door that opens.



Here's another little door at the Sweet Waters Cafe:


Apparently the faeries appreciate architectural detail and moulding on the door actually mimicks some of the moulding on the building exterior.

The Urban Faeries site is a fun little read, and it's run by illustrator/Faerie door hunter Jonathan Wright. He's got a Faerie door poster for sale on his site, along with info about his upcoming book about Faeries and their doors.

Fellow indie designer: india*romeo

A little reminder that the August issue of the Blend Creations newsletter goes out today around noon EDT. If you're looking for incentive to join our newsletter, each one comes with an exclusive discount for subscribers.

Now onto our fellow indie: india*romeo. india*romeo is another fellow Indie Finds business. (If you haven't checked out Indie Finds, do it! There's lots of uh.. indies to find). india*romeo is based out of Raleigh, NC and run by the 'lovely-thing-maker' Ileana Rodriguez.

Ileana's got quite the product range with so many things to check out, including some fabulous skirts ($68 US):


Hair accessories (from $6.50)


And even a Pretty Paper Bird Mobile:


Oooh, or if you're hunting for a bargain, check out the 'Sale' page too!

For you craft-in-the-dark types

Saw these recently in Makezine's blog: LED knitting needles!



They retail for about $40 US each (or you can get a set of 5 crochet hooks for $200 ) so you've really got to want to knit in the dark at that price, and while there are crochet hooks too, both needles and hooks only come in limited sizes.

Still, it's a novelty thing more than anything else. Good for die-hard crafters with a good dose of geek in them who absolutely must keep knitting or crocheting when the power goes out. Now, what I'd like to know is who can stand to be holding yarn and making a sweater in this heat though?

Of course, if you are inspired enough, check out the Summer issue of Knitty for stuff you can attempt to do. In my case, I've put off putting the finishing touches on my Bobbi Bear,


so I suppose I'd better get to it before the intended unborn recipient enters highschool...

So HOT :P

It's hot here. I think it's pretty hot just about anywhere in North America this week though. Yesterday it reached 37C (99F) without counting the humidity. With the humidex factored in, it was an insane 48C (something like 118F). For those interested in some Canadian trivia, the humidex is a Canadian weather term that refers to the effect of heat and humidity on the temperature. And according to Wikipedia, it's different from the heat index in the US. I think both involve some crazy equations though.

So what to do about all this heat?
Well, I for one am craving a bubble tea.

For the adventurous, you can always try making your own. Generally, it involves buying specialty bubble tea powder though, so perhaps it's too much effort on such a hot day.

I'm thinking though, we may just have to make a trip down to one of the local Bubble Tea places in Chinatown. If you're in Ottawa, I highly recommend making a stop to Bubblicity. Personally, I like the mango bubble slush...



or maybe a bubble sherbet...



or for the caffeine hit, they have iced coffee floats.



It all looks so good. It's never too early for something cold and refreshing right?